Does anyone have experience with this coach gun? I am thinking about purchasing it for CAS and as a back up HD gun. Remington used to import the same gun, called it the Spartan. The MP220 is the hammerless version, 20 inch barrel, in 12 ga.

One of the biggest things to do to make the Baikal more suitable for CAS is reshaping the cocking levers so it stays open far enough to shuck the empties and toss a couple fresh ones in. The firing pins on most, or all, of these come to full cock before the action is fully open. As the action is opened all the way, the firing pin springs are "overcocked" and spring pressure tends to push the opened action slightly closed again until it reaches equilibrium with the cocked firing pins.
The white line indicates approximately where metal needs to be removed to accomplish this. Go slow and function check often as you go. There is a CAS shooter by the name of Papa Dave who sells modified cocking levers for the Baikal if you'd rather go that route - they may or may not work; see 2nd post HERE for more info.

The auto safety can also be easily modified so it doesn't automatically engage when the shotgun is opened, but can still be engaged manually if desired.

Thanks- I will save this picture. I expect to pick the gun up in the next couple of days. I have not been able to find any negatives from the few reviews I was able to find, except it may need to be slicked up. Otherwise, from what I have read, they are very heavy duty guns, that can take a lot of abuse. I am very excited to get it and possibly take my dremel out.

My main match gun. Has many hours of labor in it. Smooth it. Shoot it and then smooth it again until you are sick of the damn thing. About then it will start working real good for you. Papa Dav's cocking levers are a great place to start.

They're good shotguns and were priced quite nicely... before Remington, anyway.
When Remington started selling them, one of the local shops put the older/original Baikals on closeout @ $229.99... 'course that was eight years ago, but at that price, I wish I had bought a couple of 'em.

Lots of cowboy shooters use them. Every new one I have handled was stiff out of the box. I've handled Baikals that people have done themselves; better than stock for sure. I've also handled guns that were slicked up by cowboy gunsmiths.

I picked it up on Thursday. Seems very heavy duty, with pretty good fit and finish. The break action is very stiff, have to use my knee. Aside from working the action over and over, is there a way to speed the process up?

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